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Why Your To-Do List is Failing Your Business · Business for Humans

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Well, welcome back. This is part three in my three-part Back to Basics series,
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which is something that I really feel strongly is a way for business owners just to simplify.
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Sometimes we try to create really complicated solutions for problems that might
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be much simpler if we look at them from a different lens.
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So this is really just a foundations building series where I talk about revenue
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and I talk about the client relationship and I also today want to talk about time management. it.
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Again, it seems so simple, but when I'm working with people one-on-one,
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I like to look at the way they manage their time.
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Because if you're a solopreneur, especially, and if you're working from home.
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You may or may not have a consistent routine.
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And sometimes I feel like for high achievers, especially,
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we have a tendency to just push, push, push, push, push,
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and feel like, well as long as I'm in
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front of my computer I'm being productive and I
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can feel good about what I did today and you may
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be spinning your wheels so I
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like to look at the way people manage their time so that we can make sure you're
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not putting a lot of extra time and effort into things that are not priorities
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and I did talk about priorities already in this series how to set priorities
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so So it's not so much about that,
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but it's about how to really bring that through into a tactical approach to
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how you're looking at your time day to day or week over week.
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So the first thing, after you've done all the prioritizing, like I've talked
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about in the past episodes, once you've looked at all the ways that you're bringing in money, right?
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So you're invoicing people, you're doing that sort of thing.
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So that's accommodated in your schedule in terms of admin time, right?
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So there is a certain amount of admin time that you need to accommodate for.
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Because if you're pushing your billable time to clients to the max,
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so that's time when you're able to bill the clients.
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And I would say there's some admin time that you can bill for.
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Don't forget about that.
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But once you've accommodated for a certain amount of admin time,
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let's call it an hour a day, or if you just want to bucket it all to one day, you can do that too.
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But I feel like for business owners, it's a little bit fatiguing to spend a whole day doing admin.
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So I would say you could just do kind of a basic check-in on admin time,
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and you need to be really conscious of where that falls in your day.
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Admin time is not a big cognitive effort, typically.
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It's really just checking in on things, checking in on finance,
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checking in on invoicing, checking in on cash flow, tools, checking in with
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your accountant, whatever admin looks like for you.
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It's not something where you're using your most strategic brain.
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It's really kind of like...
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Data entry, right? So put that time intentionally on your calendar in a time
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where you don't need your strongest mental load.
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So for me, the time when I'm a little bit tired, when my brain's starting to
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get tired, it's usually in the afternoon.
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I hit a little bit of a slump. so maybe
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it's like after lunch that might be a good time
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to just do your sweep of admin so
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why am I getting so in the weeds and
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tactical about like where these things fall in your day because
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what happens is when people plan their calendar they're not realistic about
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how much time things take or when they fall in their calendar and then they
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either over fatigue themselves by scheduling things when they're slow, right?
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So like if client work is slow, you might try to maximize your new business
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time and then you end up fatiguing yourself and then you don't have time for
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admin and then you miss invoices and then you're just like crunching, you're in a cash crunch.
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So I want you to really use your calendar like it's an assistant,
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like it's your executive assistant.
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I rarely make to-do lists because I feel like if I write it down on a piece
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of paper, it gets lost and it's not active enough.
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It's not intentionally scheduled into my day.
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It's just this list that lives on the side that has nothing to do with the way I actually operate.
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And when I'm working with clients, it's all about the calendar,
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right? I have to look at my calendar every day. What appointments do I have scheduled?
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What calls do I have scheduled? I'm living in my calendar every day.
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So if I have a to-do list off to the side, it's not integrated into my workflow.
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So if I have a proposal that I have to write, I don't put it on a piece of paper
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on the side. I schedule it into my week.
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This is very project management focused. I come from a project management background.
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You might not have this discipline of using your calendar in this way,
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and I would just love for you to try it. And the reason why I'm bringing this
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into the fold is because a client yesterday told me she shifted the way she
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was working in her calendar.
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We had worked on some calendar stuff previously, trying to intentionally schedule
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time for things. She moved into that way of working, and she's already seeing the benefits.
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She's already seeing how things change. So from a mindset perspective,
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when everything's in your calendar.
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Now you get to see how your week is shaping up and you can move things around.
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What we don't want to do is fill your calendar to the max. You need breathing
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space. You need downtime.
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You need time to take a walk. These are all really fundamentally important things
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if you're running a business.
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If you're never taking a break, your brain doesn't have time to marinate on
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everything that's been happening. You lose your creativity.
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This is a fact. Okay, it's not, oh, it's not a nice to have,
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you need to have breathing room in your schedule.
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So once you've blocked everything out in your schedule, you can start to prioritize
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and move things around and puzzle piece things so that you have time in between
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to be marinating, reflecting.
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Organizing, figuring things out.
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Very very critical for a brain that is strategic you need that creative time and breathing room so,
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You want to intentionally schedule things in your calendar, and you want to
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make sure that those things are being scheduled in blocks and in hours where
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you need whatever part of your brain to be active.
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So for me, I know that my brain is most active in the morning first thing.
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And I had to kind of accommodate my schedule to figure that out.
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Like it took some trial and effort to realize that if I'm going to do something
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strategic, I need to do it first thing in the morning.
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And that actually, for me, has meant I'm kind of pushing my exercise stuff later
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because I want to use my brain when it's at its like maximum full potential.
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So that means strategic documents. if I'm putting together really complicated
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scopes of work or proposals, I do those first thing in the morning.
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Just you know yourself. You know when you work best.
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Some people work really well on strategic things in the evening.
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So if that's true for you, don't fight it.
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Don't try to put things into blocks. If you're working on your own or you have
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some freedom around your schedule, make it work for you.
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I think the hardest thing about trying to shove ourselves into some kind of
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corporate workflow is that it doesn't always align with our own brain's rhythms.
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And if you're a business owner, don't shove yourself into the old way of working.
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Give yourself the freedom to make it work for you. But get it in there.
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Don't forget about the importance of making sure that the stuff is all scheduled out.
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So another thing that my client did that I think is really interesting,
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and I do it, but until she said it, I didn't really realize how much I rely
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on it, is color coding things.
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Now, I know this sounds so nerdy, but trust me, my client is not like a nerdy organizer.
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She's just a business owner that needed more information.
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Kind of intentionality behind the way that she was scheduling appointments and
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things because she was kind of positively doing it and then feeling really burned
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out at the end of the week and she couldn't figure out why.
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So this is where we use the calendar as a really important tool to understand
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where that fatigue was coming from and how she was scheduling her time so that
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we could give relief where relief was required.
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And obviously there's mindset around taking breaks And we'll talk about that too.
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So if you color code different pieces of your calendar, it helps you also just
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visually have a feeling about what's scheduled.
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So if you're someone who's very busy networking and setting up meetings and setting up coffees,
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it might be interesting to color code that networking time because I would recommend
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that you not do more than four to eight hours a week on business development.
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Because, again, you need to have a balance between the work that's being billed
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and the work that you're outbound trying to land, right?
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You don't want to overemphasize either one of those things, but obviously billable
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work is more important than unbillable work.
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But you want to know, again, it's intentional.
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If you're a business owner and you want to intentionally spend 75% of your time
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on business development, that's fine.
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But I want you to look at your calendar because if you're meeting with people
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and networking every day, you're going to get tired. It's just a fact.
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So if you color code it, you can kind of see how much time is that really translating
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into. Let me be intentional about that.
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The same way you're intentional about admin time?
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And where is it falling in my schedule? If you need to commute someplace, be really realistic.
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Very realistic about how much time it's going to take you to get there and all of that.
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Because I think, again, people underestimate the amount of time things take,
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including billable time for clients.
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People underestimate, and then they're ending up scrambling trying to find that extra time.
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So if you're scheduling networking time, make sure that you're accommodating
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for the travel and you're also putting a buffer in there.
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Because once you get back from networking with someone, you want to give your
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brain time to digest, you want to take some notes, and you want to do follow-ups.
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What a lot of my clients do is they do a lot of business development.
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They do outreach, they go to conferences, they talk to people,
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then they get back and they're slammed with work and then they don't follow up.
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And they're losing these potential great leads, make sure that follow-up time is scheduled in.
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So I would say you're going to a location, you have your travel time,
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you have your meeting time, you have your travel time back, and then you have
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time blocked out to marinate, digest, take notes,
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maybe it's a half hour, and send a quick follow-up.
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Like, thanks for that, that was great, blah, blah, blah.
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Maybe you send it the next day. But there's the quick follow up.
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And then there's that I'm going to send you a proposal.
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Oh, we should meet again. Like, what's the next step?
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And you should know what you want from that meeting before you even enter it.
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So if you're going to network, think about on the way there,
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think about what the ideal outcome is, what you're hoping. It doesn't always have to be a sale.
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It could just be like, I want to have a relationship with this person.
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I'd like to build a relationship with this person.
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You want to make sure you're doing that nurturing to foster a relationship and
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you're not just meeting with them and then not talking to them again for six weeks.
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So that's, you know, kind of a pitfall when we're thinking about calendars and
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we're thinking about priorities and we're thinking about how we schedule our time.
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Be very intentional about locking out the amount of time you need to do a proper follow-up.
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And then I would say when you're consistently scheduling business
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development into your week now you
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know okay I you know I I did
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a follow-up with that person I need to do another follow-up in two weeks don't
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write it on a to-do list just throw it in your calendar in two weeks in that
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block of business development time that you've scheduled so if you have a lot
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of my clients like to do Tuesdays as business development time.
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So if you have a block on Tuesday, then in two weeks, you're going to throw
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that to do in that block on Tuesday.
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I hope this is making sense. I'll break it down in the show notes so that it's a little bit more.
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It might be easier to follow if it's kind of in this bullet-pointed list.
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But I hope you're kind of understanding the reason why we want to be so focused on the calendar.
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So we have business development time, like I said, four to eight hours a week.
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It might be a block. It might be a four-hour block one day, a four-hour block another day.
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If you don't have a lot of time, if you're really, really busy on client work,
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never lose the four hours a week.
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That is the minimum minimum minimum you need to have some amount of time designated
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every single week for those follow-ups if you lose the thread you lose your
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pipeline and if you lose your pipeline you're going to be.
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Pardon my language, but screwed. You have to have an active pipeline,
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a consistent active pipeline all the time.
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You need to always have potential clients in that pipeline, people you know
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you could reach out to, conversations you've started, warm, you know, warm leads.
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That pipeline needs to be always regenerating itself because if you get to the
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point where you're really busy on client work and then that client work ends
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and you have no pipeline,
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it's going to be a real deficit in your business.
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It's like turning the heater off and then turning it on again and having to
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wait for it to ramp up. That's what's going to happen.
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You're going to be six weeks behind your next project.
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So you need to keep that pipeline always going, always on.
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And that requires weekly time dedicated to it.
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And I will tell you when my clients shifted to this, just this,
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just putting that intentional four hours a week of business development time
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in the calendar, everything changed.
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And again, it takes time to build up, right?
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It may take you a month of that consistent four hours a week,
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four hours a week, four hours a week.
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It might take some time to see the results of it, but it's not that much time.
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As soon as you get consistent, consistency is key.
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Schedule that business development time.
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Now you have your admin time locked in. You have your client work in there too.
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So again, from a project management standpoint, you should have kind of that
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workflow and timeline worked out with your clients when you send them a scope of work.
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So then you can just build all those project deliverable times straight in the calendar.
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If anyone's worked in an agency or worked as an account manager or a project
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manager, this is the way we work, right? You just throw that stuff in the calendar
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so that everyone can see those milestones in their day-to-day workflow.
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If you have some kind of project management tool outside of the regular workflow,
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people will miss deadlines.
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It's just a given. You're going to miss deadlines if it's not worked into your normal flow.
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So now we have the client work all scheduled in. We have the business development
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time. We have the admin time.
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It's intentionally scheduled, maybe color-coded. now
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you can look at that's the crux of your business
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right there and you can start to move things around shell
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game them around and in this moment
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is when if you have meetings scheduled and you don't feel like it's going to
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be easy to make that meeting without feeling really fatigued or overworked or
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overwhelmed this is where mindset comes in and you start moving things around without guilt.
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And a lot of people hold to these meeting times because they feel some obligation
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like, well, this or that. They just make up all these excuses.
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And the truth is, if you ask someone to move a meeting,
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90% of the time, they don't care. Sometimes they might say, oh,
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you know what? That doesn't work for me. Let's look at a different time.
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90% of the time, they don't even blink when you move a meeting.
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But there's a lot of internal strife that happens with certain high achievers,
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people pleasers, who feel like, oh, I can't move it because of all these reasons.
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And then as soon as you move it, you're like, oh, none of that happened.
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So move things around so that it works for you. So you have time going into
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a business development call to prepare.
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So you have time going into a client call to prepare.
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Don't keep scheduling things back to back to back to back to back because you
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just won't have the proper time to prepare.
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If you're going into a meeting with a team and a client,
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your internal team, make sure you're intentional about scheduling with the team
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at least 30 minutes before that meeting to prepare, to get ready,
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to talk about things, to set up roles and responsibilities for that call.
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So don't just plan things to be like that hour-long call, that hour-long networking session.
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Schedule the time before and after to give you that space to put your best foot forward,
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quite frankly, so that you're not just like half doing it, half showing up because you're so busy.
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Just give yourself some relief and don't schedule things so that you're so busy.
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Stretch them out. And then if you're like, okay, well, I've stretched them out
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and I'm still super busy.
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This is when you know that you need help, that you need to bring someone on
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to offload some of the work.
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This is the easiest indication, right? Now you're looking at your schedule.
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There's no way to find time. There's no way to find relief. if it's consistently
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like this for three months, that's the time. That's when you pull the lever
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and you bring someone on because you know the work is there consistently.
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So to recap, be intentional with your calendar.
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Be realistic about how much time things take.
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Intentionally schedule business
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development time minimum four hours a week every week without fail.
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Schedule in your admin time at these little you know moments where you have
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time but don't let it go make sure it's in there do it every single week because
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you want to be staying on top of invoicing and cash flow management as a business
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owner you should be doing that on a weekly basis,
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unless you have a day-to-day accountant that's working inside your business.
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But if you have someone who's like on the outside, just working here and there,
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then you need to be that CFO and you need to know where the money's at on a weekly basis.
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It's just an admin check-in.
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So that time scheduled in, you have your client time scheduled in,
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And now I want to make sure that you have room to breathe, space to think,
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move things around so that you have that.
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And then this shouldn't actually be at the bottom of the list,
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but I'm putting it at the bottom of the list because this is how our brains work.
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Now you need to schedule in all of
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your exercise time your well-being
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time your time with friends and family and maybe most of that time is happening
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after work hours but if you're someone again who's like i don't have the energy
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to go to the gym after five schedule it into your day and move everything else
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around it this time is critical goal.
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If your well-being is tanking, if you're not taking care of yourself, guess what happens?
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Your brain is not going to be firing on all cylinders.
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If you're stressing yourself out and then you're not sleeping because you're
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so stressed out and then you're trying to be creative and strategic at work
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on sleep deprivation and overwhelm, guess what?
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Your business is not going to thrive. So the well-being pieces,
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the exercise, the eating well, the taking walks, the maybe meeting up with friends
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for lunches or whatever, you have to approach it the same way you approach everything else.
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Where's the time in the day when you're feeling like this is the best time to be doing this thing?
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So whenever exercise is easiest
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for you doesn't mean it's always going to be easy but
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whenever you feel most motivated to
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exercise plug it into your calendar in that place no guilt no shame this is
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not lowest priority it's actually highest priority but the way our business
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brain works is like we gotta like put the other things in the calendar before
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we put this stuff in the calendar put it in there. This is immovable time.
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This is immovable CEO leadership time.
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You need this time in order for your brain to be most active,
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most ready for whatever is going to come down the road that you're going to need to be focused on.
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This well-being piece is critical to your business. Being.
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Successful, 100%. So I'll do a whole episode on that.
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I feel like it's so important that people just really put that to the side.
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But the more time you, not the more time you allot, but the more intentional
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focus you have on this well-being time, trust me, your business will thrive when you're thriving.
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I know it's hard to believe, but it logically makes sense, right?
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And scientifically it makes sense too.
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So thank you for listening to this recap on business basics.
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I hope it was helpful. I'm going to put the three episodes together so that
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you have a link, an easy link to all of them in the show notes.
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I feel like it is really good to just go back to basics every once in a while,
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make sure your foundation is strong, make sure you're doing some of this low hanging fruit stuff.
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And once you have that aligned, you can start to build again.
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Always, as always, if you need support, if you feel like you need help with
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this stuff, get in touch. There are lots of ways to get in touch.
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And I will leave it at that. And I will leave it at that. Talk to you next week.